Subscribe To

Sunday, May 26, 2019

Type 2 Nutrition #487: Fat Cat, Skinny Cat

We have two house cats; one is
fat and one is skinny. They were both born to feral moms about 4 years ago, one
behind a pizza parlor and the other in a backyard. A non-profit trapped the
moms as part of their TNR (Trap/Neuter/Return) program. The moms were spayed,
treated and released. The offspring were also trapped or rounded up. We
fostered the last one from each litter and eventually adopted both.

Both house cats seem to like
both foods equally. They clean their dishes and put a big dent in the chow bowl
daily. They also snack at an outdoor station where we feed our own small feral
colony. That’s how we originally got involved with the local TNR non-profit. A
litter of 4 adolescent ferals walked into our
backyard about 14 years ago. They were way too old to socialize, so we fed and
eventually trapped and TNR’d them all.

The food we give the ferals is
the same Cat Chow (32% pro; 13% fat; 42% carbs), plus 2-13.5oz cans of Purina’s
“Friskies.” The analysis of these 366kcal cans is again 11% protein, but 2.5%
fat, and 27% carbs (dry matter basis). The ferals (and our house cats) also
like these offerings equally, scarfing both down twice a day. Both the house
cats and the ferals “know” each other and frequently eat side by side at the
outdoor stations.

(As an aside, one of the ferals
occasionally comes into the house, through a door left open in warm weather,
and crosses to the kitchen to eat at the house cats’ station. But never, in the
14 years that we have faithfully fed them all, have any of the ferals ever
allowed either of us to touch any of them, oreven get close.)

All the ferals are lean. So why,
given the way they are fed, is one of our house cats lean and the other fat?
They both have access to all 3 types of food. Both have good appetites, and
both have equal opportunities for exercise. Both run around the house and yard,
frequently chasing each other or birds or butterflies. The big, lean male, is
less active – more of a couch potato, but the fat female is completely
undeterred by her girth.

If this were simply a comparison
between two carnivores – our house cats – eating a high carbohydrate diet, one
could hypothesize that the “pizza baby’s” genetic makeup was epigenetically
“expressed” when she was exposed to the high-carb Fancy Feast and Friskies
diet. Or, that the “pizza baby’s” momalready had those “expressed” genes (she
survived by living behind the pizza parlor) andpassed them on to her offspringwho
were thus born predisposed and are therefore likely to get fat on a high-carb
diet. And our lean house cat – the “backyard baby” – was perhaps the
product of a feral mom who hunted mice and voles and had a different set of
genes or similar genes that had not
been epigenetically expressed by what she
ate. She therefore produced a large, well-shaped, lean male kitten. For
further reading, see Dr. Cate Shanahan’s book, “Deep Nutrition.”

Restating the question: Why
didn’t the young ferals who wandered into our backyard 14 years ago get fat on
our nutritionally poor diet? Is it because they were offspring of a carnivorous
mom who ate animal protein and fat and had not
had her genes “expressed”? Is that
why her offspring aren’t fat cats like our “pizza baby”?

We’ll
never know. Our cats will never reproduce. But how about you and your
offspring? We’re said to be omnivores,
but I would say that humans, while not obligate carnivores, are perhaps
facultative carnivores, a species that “does best on a carnivorous diet, but can
survive-but-not-thrive on a non-carnivorous one.” This has been amply
demonstrated, I think, by the effects that the high carbohydrate diet that we’ve been eating since the dawn of the
Neolithic Age, made worse recently by the highly processed industrial foods we
now eat.

About Me

I was diagnosed a Type 2 diabetic in 1986. I started a Very Low Carb diet (Atkins Induction) in 2002 to lose weight. I didn’t realize at the time that it would put my diabetes in clinical remission, or that I would be able to give up almost all of my oral diabetes meds. I also didn’t understand that, as I lost weight and continued to eat Very Low Carb, my blood lipids would dramatically improve (doubling my HDL and cutting my triglycerides by 2/3rds) and that my blood pressure would drop from 130/90 to 110/70 on the same meds.
Over the years I changed from Atkins to the Bernstein Diet (designed for diabetics) and, altogether lost 170 pounds. I later regained some and then lost some. As long as I eat Very Low Carb, I am not hungry and I have lots of energy. And I no longer have any of the indications of Metabolic Syndrome.
My goal, as long as I have excess body fat, is to remain continuously in a ketogenic state, both for blood glucose regulation and continued weight loss. I expect that this regimen will continue to provide the benefits of reduced systemic inflammation, improved blood lipids and lower blood pressure as well.